Media outlets reluctantly publish on Trudeau groping allegations

It’s taken three weeks, three full weeks, but media outlets are finally starting to address the Trudeau groping allegation.

Funny how long it has taken and how each of the three new takes is very gentle when approaching the topic of the Justin Trudeau allegedly groping a woman 18 years ago. National Post did a long and wandering piece last week, the Hamilton Spectator published a column last night and this morning CBC has a column up.

Still, no direct questions to the PM from the media outlets and journalists that have access to him on Parliament Hill.

In the meantime The Globe and Mail, which has spent a lot of time and money on a take down of winemaker Norman Hardie over allegations that he is a jerk to work for hasn’t touched the Trudeau allegations. Hardie has been dropped by the LCBO and SAQ over the Globe stories, they have done multiple, and other media outlets have jumped on the bandwagon driven by the Globe.

Justin Trudeau gets a different treatment.

The Post story from last Friday is interesting in that the headline would leave you thinking Trudeau is innoecent of all allegations even though the story doesn’t lead there. In fact, other than spelling out facts mostly already known and speaking to more people than anyone knew existed in relation to the story, the Post piece doesn’t really lead anywhere.

At the Spec, a Toronto Star property no less, Andrew Dreschel points out that Trudeau has set the standard on Parliament Hill.

Those standards include suspending and subsequently expelling two Liberal MPs from caucus and accepting the resignations of Kent Hehr from cabinet and PMO staffer Claude-Eric Gagne.

So does Trudeau get held to the same standard? He claimed yes in a CBC interview earlier this year but so far neither he nor the Parliamentary reporters that cover him have done so.

Dreschel correctly points out that the canned statement about the PM not recalling any negative interactions is not much of denial.

He doesn’t add anything to this story that wasn’t known earlier this month and covered by me or Mark Bonokoski in the Sun but I’m glad that Dreschel is finally bringing this information to a new audience.

Finally the state broadcaster notices.

In CBC’s opinion section Robyn Urback takes up the cause.

The normally fearless Urback tries to find a way to write that she doesn’t really believe this should be discussed, makes it sound like she doesn’t think there is any merit to the case before explaining that in the current climate we must look at these allegations.

There is also an odd turn where she says outright that this case is different because there was no power imbalance. Oddly though, there was.

The millionaire son of a former PM being feted in town as a celebrity that this mere local reporter was sent to cover. Remember, Trudeau is quoted as saying he would not have been so forward if he knew the woman was writing for national newspapers.

That would speak to a power imbalance.

I’ll grant Urback credit for tying in what Trudeau said to her own network and including the CBC video that I posted at the beginning of June. Like Dreschel, she is at least exposing this story to readers of a media outlet that has otherwise ignored this story.

Trudeau has boxed himself in on this story, it’s just too bad that his own MPs refuse to hold him to the standard he set and that the reporters on the Hill want to give Trudeau a free pass that they wouldn’t extend to anyone else.